Carbon/carbon (“C/C”) parts are employed in various industries. An exemplary use for C/C parts includes using them as friction disks in aircraft brake disks, race car brake disks, clutch disks, and the like. C/C brake disks are especially useful in such applications because of the superior high temperature characteristics of C/C material. In particular, the C/C material used in C/C parts is a good conductor of heat, and thus, is able to dissipate heat away from the braking surfaces that is generated in response to braking. C/C material is also highly resistant to heat damage, and is capable of sustaining friction between brake surfaces during severe braking, without a significant reduction in the friction coefficient or mechanical failure.
Today's prevalent commercial approach to prepare fibrous preform structures for manufacturing carbon-carbon brake disks is to needle-punch layers of OPF PAN fibers in a board shape from which donut shape preforms are cut. The preforms are subsequently subjected to a costly carbonization cycle to transform the fiber into carbon. This approach yields a large amount of fiber waste. A more effective method to fabricate the fibrous preform structure is to organize carbonized fibers with a suitable fiber architecture in a continuous handleable spiral shape fabric. The carbon fiber narrow fabric is subsequently fed into a circular needle punch machine to prepare a three dimensional textile.
Various technologies exist for fabricating a continuous spiral fabric by modifying a conventional weaving loom such as a rapier or shuttle loom. Conical take-off rollers are used to control the take-up advance of the various warp yarns to form the specific geometry of the spiral fabric.
In weaving, it is desirable to form a fiber architecture that has a reasonably homogeneous fiber content across the fabric width to facilitate further processing and to yield suitable composite properties. Additionally, a reasonably consistent thickness of the fabric across the textile width is desirable during needle punching. In the case of a carbon brake disk application, it may be desirable to obtain a higher ratio of radial to circumferential reinforcement to draw out heat along the radial direction, thus a fabric with a higher weft to warp fiber content may be desirable. Holes or gaps in a textile may have a negative impact on thermo-mechanical and friction properties of the final brake material.